GoodSearch - a New Way to Help Your Charity

This is being long time I am heartily involved with one of NGO (charitable or not-for-profit) organization of India. The organization is working on five different wings of our social life - education, health, culture, livelihood and ecology. We often come across the difficulty of raising fund and funding the various projects running on at different parts of India. I was in a need of exploring the different funding options for this organization. And one fine day I came across with one very interesting and useful funding option on Internet.

This is an Internet search mechanism which helps you to raise fund for your noble cause. The option called GoodSearch. GoodSearch.com is an organization that pays you back to your organization for each search you do using their search tool. Goodsearch actually powered by Yahoo, so you can rely upon the effectiveness of the Internet search.

How It Works

There are two things of this funding raising option - one called GoodSearch and another called GoodShop. Whenever you do goodsearch on Internet using goodsearch.com for your preferred charitable organization a fixed amount goes to your organization. As a result of your search they get paid for displaying relevant ads based on your search and a part of that goodsearch pays to your charitable organization.

I believe GoodShop is even more powerful than GoodSearch. Every time you do shop on Internet a certain percentage of that amount of transaction goes to your charitable organization. Gooshop has very wide list of Internet merchandises for which they have predefined percentages. All you need to do is identify your preferred charitable organization and then go to the online shopping site thru GoodShop. After you place your order successfully, Goodshop will credit the amount as per the policy in your account. GoodShop credit my take one week of time to actually credit to your account.

What You Need to Do

For GoodSearch - If you visit GoodSearch website you will see two different textboxes. It was little confusing for me when I first visited the site on how to search. Later I found it is very easy and simple. Your first box is the search box which is same as you do search using Yahoo or Google. You need to put the search strings for which you want to see the search result listings.

The second box is the place where you need to say the name of your charitable organization. You can put any words from the name of the organization and then click 'Verify' button to list down all matching organization's name. Goodsearch has database of charitable organizations. Once you find your charitable organization name, select that and that will be stored in that textbox until you clear this selection. If you close the browser and visit again to Goodsearch.com the browser will remember your selection, so you no need to add it again.

Once you successfully added your organization, now you do search putting your string on the first textbox as you do for any other search engines available on Internet. For your each search your organization will get paid.

For GoodShop - Once you added your preferred charitable organization on earlier step now it is very easy to use this same for your online shopping. Just click on 'Shop Now' button on this site to start this process. Once you click on 'Shop Now' it will take to a page where it will show your current selection and list of most popular online stores. Just click on the link of shop you want to go from there. If you don't get the name of your online shop where you want to go you can check the link for 'All Stores'. You can even search from categorized link of all shops GoodShop supports. I found all most all major online stores are listed their.

Is Your Charity Listed in GoodSearch?

If you put few phrases of your charity name in verify text area and click on 'Verify', it will fetch the list of charities which are listed with them. If you don't find your charity listed you can place a request to add the same. Please remember that your charity needs to be registered in US and should have EIN (Employer Identification Number). There is a link in GoodSearch.com home page called 'Add a New Charity or School'. By going inside that link you can submit a request to add your charity or school to GoodSearch database.

How Much Benefit your Charity May Get?

This was a real vital question to me. I have added my organization to it and trying to educate my members on how to use it. I am not very sure how effective this or whether they pay or not. At least, I didn't hear anything wrong about them till date. There are lots of News coverage on them on Internet. You may wish to read them. To me the calculation is very clear and seems very interesting. You need to have members and who are really using Internet to dig there queries. Having lots of members using this site for there daily search purpose can add up to a great amount for your charity. Especially I believe on potential of GoodShop. We are using Internet for online shopping very frequently now-a-days. Suppose you buy a laptop of worth of $1200 (which is very common). 1.5% of $1200 is $18 which is not a bad amount at all. Now think if you have 100 members and all are doing little online shopping. This may add to a significant amount. The percentage of giving credit for online shopping varies from store to store. Finally you need to spread the word that is the key point I realized. Only the thing for which I didn't feel much comfortable that they pays only once in a year during December for the amount earned during 1^st October to 30^th September. I feel it will be more interactive if they planned to send monthly contribution and they may ask for a cut-off fund to be accumulated before they send the check.

Useful Links

1. Add a New Charity or School
   
2. List of Participating Charities or Schools
   
3. About Us/FAQ
   
4. Add GoodSearch in your IE toolbar
   
5. Custom Search box for your website
   
6. Add GoodSearch logo in your site
   
7. GoodSearch in the News
   
8. Contact GoodSearch
   
9. GoodSeach Gear
   
10. GoodShop